


Family Constellations

by DefendersofMCUniverse (GeekMom13)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Married Life, So Married, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:35:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23404603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeekMom13/pseuds/DefendersofMCUniverse
Summary: Lance grew up on this beach. Now he brings home his son.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 64





	Family Constellations

**Author's Note:**

> This is my piece from [Home: A Domestic Klance Zine.](https://domestic-klance-zine.tumblr.com/)  
> In the zine, there's beautiful art to go with this story by Ava!

“Daddy,  _ why do we have to go here?” _ Reggie whined out as he pouted at the beach. 

“Papa wants to share part of his childhood with you, come on.”

“But it’s  _ gross _ here.” 

Keith laughed and picked up their son. “You’ll learn soon enough- when you love someone, you deal with their weird interests.” 

Reggie scowled at the sand and wrinkled his nose. “I guess.” 

“Listen, Papa watches all your shows with you-”

“Papa LOVES Paw Patrol.” 

Keith laughed a bit. “No, no, he doesn’t. But he watches it because you love it, and he loves you.”

Reggie let out a puff of air and grumbled. 

“That’s why we go and deal with sand and weird things in the water, because Papa loves it, and we love Papa, right?”

“Yeah.” 

Keith kissed the top of Reggie’s head and carried him to where Lance was losing a battle with the tent they were supposed to sleep in that night. Keith put the toddler on one of the logs near the fire, reminding him not to touch before helping Lance set up the tent.

They managed to get it up without ripping it.

“Papa. This is  _ boring.” _

Lance flinched but waved at the bag sitting on the log across from Reggie. “We’ll get to the s’mores later. I brought stuff for sandcastles too!” 

Reggie leaned over and looked at the sand, then up to Keith. 

Keith raised an eyebrow, and Reggie hopped off the log and started to rummage through the bag. Lance grabbed one of the buckets and filled it with water, jogging back to where they were set up to wet the sand. 

“That’s the key- the sand can’t be too dry, or it’ll all fall apart. But too wet, and it will melt into nothing.” 

Reggie felt the sand his Papa was mixing and scrunched his nose- wet sand felt even  _ more gross _ than dry sand. He looked at his hand in distaste, trying to wipe it off into the castle blocks they brought from home. 

He really preferred building with clay. 

Reggie poked at the sand a bit more before looking up and seeing his Papa and Daddy smiling down at him. He was going to ask Nana Krolia for a  _ long _ bath after this. 

Before long, Papa had sat down next to him and helped him stacking the sand to make a castle, and what Daddy said started to make sense. Papa was  _ really happy, _ and Reggie was the reason. 

Maybe the gross sand was worth it. 

* * *

Keith smiled as he watched Lance and Reggie building a castle. He couldn’t have imagined this ever being his life when the babysitter had answered the door, and the police told him that his Dad was gone. 

As he bounced around the foster system, he was sure that he was set to be another failure- that’s what he heard so often about himself. He’d be a loser just like all the other orphans, that’s what the kids at school said. 

But here he was, happily married and raising their son. 

Keith looked up at Lance as the sunset slowly faded into night, ready to move onto his favorite part of the tradition. There were photos of him as a kid making s’mores. The first year his Dad let him hold the stick was the last year they had been together. He was only seven that year.

He could vaguely remember the one foster family when he was eleven making them. 

They were nice, but then he left for the Garrison at thirteen, and then they had a kid of their own. There was a family discussion after that- Keith would still be their foster kid, but he would stay on campus for each summer. They happily paid for his schooling, calling each month and making sure everything was okay. 

He never did find out how they reacted to the whole “dropout and go to war” thing. By that time, Shiro and Adam were fielding all the calls anyway. 

During that time, Lance had come into his life, a blur of cock-sure attitude and hollow flirting, and Keith had hated him instantly. 

Keith shook his head- his thirteen-year-old self would  _ hate _ him now. Lance calmed down as the years went on, and Keith realized the old saying was true- it really was a thin line between love and hate. 

Maybe the whole “intergalactic war” might have steered them to each other, but maybe they always would have ended up here. 

He had been so worried about Lance wanting to bring him home for the annual summer campout that first time. He had met parts of the McClain family before and spent a lot of time with Veronica (who insisted the family would like him more than they liked Lance), but it didn’t stop the echoes of his childhood. 

He had been greeted with open arms, given a seat at the table, and called son. They had even taken in his mother, unafraid of her purple skin, even after seeing the work camps that Sendak operated. 

They had been back every year since, leaving Reggie back at the main house with the twins or with Krolia. This was Reggie’s first year on the beach. He dealt with it about as well as Keith had. 

Keith had convinced Lance to bring a tent after the first year, not a huge fan of waking up to a sunburn. 

That next year, he had proposed to Lance on the beach. He didn’t even have a ring, but he had known at that moment that Lance was all he wanted. They had cut up the tent string and found a shell to make a make-shift ring. 

Lance still wore part of the tent around his wrist.

The year after that, they had gotten married here. The beach had been filled with Lance’s full family, the entire town, and the Blades as Lance took his last name. 

Keith had absolutely  _ not  _ cried the first time Lance had told him. 

Krolia had been no better upon the news, sharing stories of the man she loved on the strange planet she was sent to watch over. 

This beach had become part of their family now too. 

* * *

Lance grew up on this beach. 

And not just in an “I have a bunch of memories here” kind of way. 

_ No, _ he had been born in the small house that backed up to the beach and didn’t leave it until the Garrison. 

His family would spend the last weekend before the tourist season started on the beach. Lance’s first summer camping out, he was Reggie’s age. They built sandcastles and enjoyed the sunset over the ocean, and the stars slowly peeking out from the darkness. 

Lance believed it was magic for a long time- how the stars appeared in the same spots!

He insisted that they were friends reaching out just to him.

Veronica had never let him live it down. 

He found out later he was right- for the most part. They had found many friends in those stars. They had lost a bunch too.

Those weekends on the beach were the one thing he couldn’t wait to share with Keith. Sure, the tourist-watching, bonfire-building, just the right side of drunk summers had their appeal too… but nothing could beat the feeling of peace this weekend always brought. 

He spent years here, learning to walk, then run; to sing and dance. This sand was almost as much a part of him as the stars were.

Lance could remember doing homework on the beach- and the teacher offering an unimpressed scowl when he’d return it wrinkled from the water and a bit brittle with the ocean’s salt. He had his first kiss here too, with a girl who had come to do a class project with him- they never did recover the second worksheet from the waves. 

Lance glanced back up to the house, still the same as it had ever been. 

He used to hate that- the small town that never changed. Buildings were always painted with the same colors; a town passed down from generation to generation without growth. 

No one wanted to make things better, bigger,  _ different. _ It was boring. 

He had every plan to leave and never return. 

Then he left. 

Coming home that first time made him realize it wasn’t boring. It was welcoming. 

He knew that this stretch of beach would welcome him home no matter what. The little blue building right outside the airport would always have the secret Alvarez recipes, passed down in the family along with the building, cooking in large enough quantities to feed an army. He could count on the hardware store that used to bear someone’s name five generations ago to prepare him for the beach campouts. 

This place wasn’t made to be more than it was. 

And Lance, Lance now realized what made that wonderful instead of terrible. 

What made it  _ Home. _

* * *

The sun finished setting, and Lance pulled out the bag of marshmallows. “Time for S’Mores!”

Keith picked up Reggie and held out his stick towards Lance, sitting on the log next to him. They carefully helped Reggie roast a marshmallow, and Lance immediately sandwiched it in the crackers and chocolate, offering the toddler a bite. 

Reggie grabbed the rest from Lance, happily ignoring the small bits of sand clinging to the sticky melted marshmallow. 

Keith smiled and had Lance load up a couple of sticks for them since Reggie didn’t seem to want to share his treat. 

They watched as the light faded completely, the stars slowly appearing in the sky. Lance could see their mothers in the window looking out over the three of them. 

He offered a wave and turned back to where Keith was pointing out stars they visited to Reggie. They may not have been able to land on every star, but they enjoyed getting as close as was safe. 

After the war, they had taken a month visiting all the lion constellations they could find in every galaxy (even making up a few). 

Red had rumbled what seemed like a laugh when Lance declared that one slightly wonky pentagon was  _ definitely _ a lion. To be fair, in that particular system, tucked between a few destroyed galaxies, there wasn’t much in the way of stars. Just debris and decay from a long-fought war.

Keith had seen the sadness in Lance’s eyes and agreed, pointing out how it was  _ obviously _ Green because it was small and stealthy. 

They saved Leo for last, and then visited a few other constellations.

Lance had traced out both their names in the stars, just where you’d be able to see them from two specific spots on Earth. 

He wanted to make sure  _ KEITH _ would be easy to find on this beach… and that  _ LANCE  _ would forever watch over the small desert that Keith called home before the war. 

By the third time Reggie yawned with his whole face, they were all a bit tired. Lance placed a few more logs and helped Reggie onto Keith’s shoulders. 

“Okay, buddy, do you remember what we taught you about the stars?”

“Yup! That’s Draco!” 

Lance smiled as he named a couple more, before a yawn cut him off again. “Good job. Now how about finding at least one new one for us tonight?”

Reggie rubbed his eyes and squinted at the sky, tugging on Keith’s hair to get him to spin around. He was concentrating hard on the sky, trying to pick out a new shape. 

Lance remembered the first time he had told Keith to make a new constellation. He had picked the two brightest stars in the sky and declared they made a knife. Lance had rolled his eyes, but snapped a photo, carefully tracing the line between and turning it into a knife on his screen. 

Keith had been more serious after that, finding all forms of sea creatures. Lance returned the enthusiasm by finding things with fire and knives. 

They had a little album full of them, starting with the collection of Lions- all named after Voltron and the Lion King- and growing every year when they made memories on the beach.

Their wedding night, Keith had added a small heart and refused to tell Lance the name of it. Lance had dragged him out the night before to tell him his plan to take Keith’s family name, tracing a perfect circle in the sky. He had given a full speech on how Lance’s family was huge- there would be many McClains to come, but Keith was the last of his family, and Lance wanted to carry that on. 

Tonight would be Reggie’s first chance to add to the album himself- he made appearances before, of course… and both of the men he was named after were in the book - Regris and Ulaz. 

Reggie squealed and pointed out five stars. Lance snapped a photo and let Reggie trace what he pictured in those stars. 

Underneath, in his best scribbles, he named it.

_ Home. _


End file.
